newcenturybanknc.com history

His attack on its banker-controlled power touched a popular nerve with Americans, and when the Second Bank’s charter expired in 1836, it was not renewed.

In response to a rising volume of check transactions, the New York Clearinghouse Association was established in 1853 to provide a way for the city’s banks to exchange checks and settle accounts.

During the Civil War, the National Banking Act of 1863 was passed, providing for nationally chartered banks, whose circulating notes had to be backed by United States government securities.

The Panic of 1893, for example, may have had similar drivers to earlier panics.

Under these systems, the economy grew rapidly, but growth was interrupted by a series of financial panics during the Gilded Age, which culminated in the Panic of 1907.

In 1908, Congress passed the Aldrich-Vreeland Act to establish the National Monetary Commission.

An Address by Senator Nelson W. Aldrich Before the Economic Club of New York, November 29, 1909, on the Work of the National Monetary Commission,” November 29, 1909, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/610.

Letter from Secretary of the National Monetary Commission, Transmitting, Pursuant to Law, the Report of the Commission,” January 8, 1912, https://www.federaelreservehistory.org/-/media/files/national_monetary_commission_report_1912.pdf.

But, by November 16, 1914, the 12 cities chosen as sites for regional Reserve Banks were open for business, just as hostilities in Europe erupted into World War I.

Strong’s aggressive action to stem a recession in 1923 through a large purchase of government securities gave clear evidence of the power of open market operations to influence the availability of credit in the banking system.

The Federal Reserve System formally committed to maintaining a low interest rate peg on government bonds in 1942 after the United States entered World War II. It did so at the request of the Treasury to allow the federal government to engage in cheaper debt financing of the war.

By August 1979, when Paul Volcker was sworn in as Fed chairman, drastic action was needed to break inflation’s stranglehold on the United States economy.

Two months after Alan Greenspan took office as the Fed chairman, the stock market crashed on October 19, 1987.